The central portion of Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith lays out the New Perspective on The Church - which is no longer new. It is broad brush summarized as follows:
Jesus taught and enacted a kingdom vision.
His immediate followers were committed to this vision
Paul's disavowal of the necessity to submit to Jerusalem demonstrates that it was Spirit driven
At its core the movement was a rebellion against human, particularly Roman, empire in favor of what could be - Kingdom of God
The diversity of texts found at Nag Hammadi among others demonstrate that belief in the early church was not uniform
The Gospel of Thomas is as old and as faithful as any of the four in the NT
Luke in Luke-Acts was setting forth a Christian epic to compete with the Aeneid and other epics
This community (ekklesia = gathering with political undertones) became distorted into a hierarchical church emphasizing beliefs and authority
→ The distortion is apparent as early as the first epistle of Clement (ca. 92 AD)
→ The distortion develops through Tertullian and Origin and Cyprian
→ The distortion crystallized with Roman favor and Constantine
The council at Nicaea, far from being a sober and Spirit led occasion marked the end of the beginning. The transition was complete.
Meanwhile the Christian bishops went on debating the fine points of theology, Now they argued over what homoousious really meant and the nature of Mary's relationship to God and Christ. They composed more creeds and excommunicated more people. After the fall of Rome in 476, the ensuing centuries toll a dismal story if the repeated failure of using creeds and excommunications to achieve any result, except for further rancor. (p. 108)
So here is a question to ponder:
Which parts of Cox's perspective on the Church ring true - and which parts don't? How would you tell the story?
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. Chris Armstrong chooses, from the 20th Century, Dorothy Sayers and I love how he describes her: "Unorthodox in her personality, but passionately orthodox in her faith Dorothy Sayers would find herself (almost by accident) blessing a generation sunk in the spiritual doldrums" (182).
), I've known of her quirks and her genius -- and the genius can be found in any number of her writings. To choose her as a patron saint for postmoderns is a wise choice.
). In that book, Stott frequently referred to someone I knew very little about but who was obviously a significant figure for Stott. The preacher's name was Charles Simeon. I never chased anything down about Simeon, but over the decades I've seen his name mentioned plenty of times. So I was pleased to see that Chris Armstrong, in 
, Comenius' legacy is as a Czech education reformer. In fact, he's often seen as the father of modern education. Quite the story, but what I like about Armstrong's choice is that he makes an educator a saint.
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